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bunrabWe spent Christmas day with my brother and his family.
We don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, since we're atheists, but we have no objection to celebrating a generic winter holiday that we can call Christmas for convenience - it's easier for other people to recognize than if we pick the name of a holiday that belongs to a lesser-known sect, or try to explain a non-religious holiday. Which isn't that difficult, really: when it's at the darkest and coldest time of year, humans feel a need to gather together in groups and do something to add more light to their surroundings and to bribe Nature to bring back more natural light. We're not exempt from those normal human feelings just because we don't happen to believe that carrying out such rituals will invoke a supernatural being to perform a miracle. We exchange presents - just because we don't believe in miracles doesn't mean we'll pass up an opportunity to try to please each other, our friends, and our relatives. And we have fun with all the seasonal specialty foods - again, no belief in God is necessary to enjoy pie and turkey and candy and eggnog and those big bags of tangerines and hot chocolate with cinnamon on top. So, just as there is a religious thing called marriage and a civil contract called marriage, which are frequently the same and can be celebrated together or one can have just the civil contract and still consider it marriage, so we can have a religious holiday named Christmas and a civil holiday called Christmas, which may have had its roots centuries ago in the religious Christmas, just as the idea of a civil wedding has its original roots in religion because it used to be that the religious and the civil authorities were one, and civil ceremonies WERE religious ones. Thus, the atheist's Christmas. Unlike some rabid atheists, we'll wish other people merry Christmas if that's what they celebrate, or happy Chanukah, or a joyous Solstice to our Wiccan and pagan friends, and even a happy Saturnalia just to recall that most Anglos have their roots in the old Roman empire. We send out holiday cards that don't have religious themes, and that feature the joys of a secular winter season. (Usually animal-related, of course: we send out Christmas/holiday cards that feature rabbits whenever possible!)
We even decorate a tree - a custom which has roots that predate Christianity. Roots in religions long since faded away. But what the heck, those natural impulses to bring signs of life and renewal indoors, with lots of light. So we have ornaments - six or seven trees' worth, at last count, so we have to rotate them. None of them are religious; no angels, crosses, creches, virgins, or for that matter no menorahs, dreidels, or stars of David. Mostly animals, as you might expect; our general themes for rotating the ornaments are:
-cats;
-rabbits and rodents (mice, mostly, a common theme in lots of Christmas ornaments anyway, but we also have commercial ornaments featuring beavers and squirrels, and quite a few handmade ornaments, both by me and others, featuring guinea pigs, and at least one chinchilla ornament I hand-painted on a tile);
-things with wings (birds, butterflies, gargoyles, bats, airplanes; the birds include lots of penguins and a few puffins which also join the marine life theme);
-marine life (lots of fish, both commercial ornaments and various fish souvenirs that weren't meant to be Christmas ornaments but they are now; dolphins and orcas, seashells, a brass cownose manta ray ornament, honestly, from the Texas State Aquarium; a bunch of Mexican ornaments with the common folk theme of mermaids playing ukeleles or perhaps they're guitars; turtles...);
-other animals (bears, moose, pandas, endangered species, armadillos, dinosaurs, llamas and alpacas; things which have four legs and heads but aren't clearly identifiable as to species, like some little knitted things and handmade clay things)
-music (which, besides musical instruments and notes and little bits of sheet music and Victorian Christmas carolers, also includes some of the animal ornaments, including the set of six bears dressed up as a marching band, the Victorian-dressed mice singing Christmas carols, the frog playing a fiddle, and some tiny music boxes which are figures of birds which also happen to play tinny tiny electronic Christmas carols)
-homemade and everything else (homemade includes needlepoint ornaments of stockings and stars and geometric figures, cross-stitch ditto, some overlap from the other categories, including my mother's little fish and mermaids that she used to sew, a clay ornament my youngest sister made in kindergarten for me, my Fimo clay guinea pigs and hand-painted chinchilla, and so on; everything else includes all the souvenir ornaments we've acquired on vacations. This year, it includes the three Library of Congress ornaments we got on sale when we visited there with Cindy a couple weeks ago - the previous years' ornaments are about 1/3 the price of the current ones; there are also souvenirs of Canada from internet gift exchanges, and of San Diego from vacations and of Germany from a vacation there, and from assorted history and art museums.)
It's a lot of boxes of ornaments, and we haven't unearthed all of them yet since moving, to try and get them together in one storage space. No doubt the garland of mylar musical notes will turn up in a box of shoes, the medallions of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms with red ribbons and bows glued on them will turn up inside a teapot or something.)
We gave G and Jen my hand-knitted slippers, and Jen a scarf as well, since she missed my scarf-making binge of a couple of years ago. That's pretty much all we're giving to most adults this year. But we are giving more presents to assorted nieces and nephews, in this case Jen's son. The two books we got him turned out to be appropriate for his age and developmental disability status; he didn't like the handmade hat but his mom did so he'll wear it! His best present, from his new stepdad, was a "Band in a Box" - a set of percussion instruments including a triangle, tambourine, maracas, cymbals, and a couple other wooden thingies. He can carry a tune and rhythm, and even a lot of the words, and so we all got to sing about 30 choruses of Jingle Bells with Joe on the triangle, and another few with Joe on the cymbals. His mom's going to hide the cymbals for outdoor use only!
Dear friends: yes, we like music. Yes, we like CDs and devote a large chunk of our floor space to our collection of music. No, we do NOT want CDs from you as presents. Chances are, if we like it, we already own it. Chances are, if you buy us as a Christmas gift some recording company's "A _______ Sampler," that either we have it, or, more likely, if we like that kind of music, we have every single album that the songs on the sampler came from. If you MUST buy us a CD, consider buying something put out by a local or regional musical group near where you are, that we are unlikely to see distributed up here. Your rule of thumb should be: if you can find it in Barnes and Noble, do not buy it for S & K (gift certificates being the only exception). OK? Yes, it's the thought that counts, and you no doubt were thinking that it reflects the fact that you've noticed our tastes and bought something that fits those tastes. But perhaps, you should have thought, gee, I know that's to their taste because they have several hundred albums of it already!
Oh, and the same applies to books.
That said, we bought ourselves another 5 albums of Christmas music to add to our already-large collection. For some reason, we had not, before now, noticed Trout Fishing In America's Christmas album. And a couple of brass groups we didn't already have, Chris Isaak because I like his voice, and one of the Christmas Revels albums we had also heretofore overlooked.
Happy Boxing Day, everyone!
We don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, since we're atheists, but we have no objection to celebrating a generic winter holiday that we can call Christmas for convenience - it's easier for other people to recognize than if we pick the name of a holiday that belongs to a lesser-known sect, or try to explain a non-religious holiday. Which isn't that difficult, really: when it's at the darkest and coldest time of year, humans feel a need to gather together in groups and do something to add more light to their surroundings and to bribe Nature to bring back more natural light. We're not exempt from those normal human feelings just because we don't happen to believe that carrying out such rituals will invoke a supernatural being to perform a miracle. We exchange presents - just because we don't believe in miracles doesn't mean we'll pass up an opportunity to try to please each other, our friends, and our relatives. And we have fun with all the seasonal specialty foods - again, no belief in God is necessary to enjoy pie and turkey and candy and eggnog and those big bags of tangerines and hot chocolate with cinnamon on top. So, just as there is a religious thing called marriage and a civil contract called marriage, which are frequently the same and can be celebrated together or one can have just the civil contract and still consider it marriage, so we can have a religious holiday named Christmas and a civil holiday called Christmas, which may have had its roots centuries ago in the religious Christmas, just as the idea of a civil wedding has its original roots in religion because it used to be that the religious and the civil authorities were one, and civil ceremonies WERE religious ones. Thus, the atheist's Christmas. Unlike some rabid atheists, we'll wish other people merry Christmas if that's what they celebrate, or happy Chanukah, or a joyous Solstice to our Wiccan and pagan friends, and even a happy Saturnalia just to recall that most Anglos have their roots in the old Roman empire. We send out holiday cards that don't have religious themes, and that feature the joys of a secular winter season. (Usually animal-related, of course: we send out Christmas/holiday cards that feature rabbits whenever possible!)
We even decorate a tree - a custom which has roots that predate Christianity. Roots in religions long since faded away. But what the heck, those natural impulses to bring signs of life and renewal indoors, with lots of light. So we have ornaments - six or seven trees' worth, at last count, so we have to rotate them. None of them are religious; no angels, crosses, creches, virgins, or for that matter no menorahs, dreidels, or stars of David. Mostly animals, as you might expect; our general themes for rotating the ornaments are:
-cats;
-rabbits and rodents (mice, mostly, a common theme in lots of Christmas ornaments anyway, but we also have commercial ornaments featuring beavers and squirrels, and quite a few handmade ornaments, both by me and others, featuring guinea pigs, and at least one chinchilla ornament I hand-painted on a tile);
-things with wings (birds, butterflies, gargoyles, bats, airplanes; the birds include lots of penguins and a few puffins which also join the marine life theme);
-marine life (lots of fish, both commercial ornaments and various fish souvenirs that weren't meant to be Christmas ornaments but they are now; dolphins and orcas, seashells, a brass cownose manta ray ornament, honestly, from the Texas State Aquarium; a bunch of Mexican ornaments with the common folk theme of mermaids playing ukeleles or perhaps they're guitars; turtles...);
-other animals (bears, moose, pandas, endangered species, armadillos, dinosaurs, llamas and alpacas; things which have four legs and heads but aren't clearly identifiable as to species, like some little knitted things and handmade clay things)
-music (which, besides musical instruments and notes and little bits of sheet music and Victorian Christmas carolers, also includes some of the animal ornaments, including the set of six bears dressed up as a marching band, the Victorian-dressed mice singing Christmas carols, the frog playing a fiddle, and some tiny music boxes which are figures of birds which also happen to play tinny tiny electronic Christmas carols)
-homemade and everything else (homemade includes needlepoint ornaments of stockings and stars and geometric figures, cross-stitch ditto, some overlap from the other categories, including my mother's little fish and mermaids that she used to sew, a clay ornament my youngest sister made in kindergarten for me, my Fimo clay guinea pigs and hand-painted chinchilla, and so on; everything else includes all the souvenir ornaments we've acquired on vacations. This year, it includes the three Library of Congress ornaments we got on sale when we visited there with Cindy a couple weeks ago - the previous years' ornaments are about 1/3 the price of the current ones; there are also souvenirs of Canada from internet gift exchanges, and of San Diego from vacations and of Germany from a vacation there, and from assorted history and art museums.)
It's a lot of boxes of ornaments, and we haven't unearthed all of them yet since moving, to try and get them together in one storage space. No doubt the garland of mylar musical notes will turn up in a box of shoes, the medallions of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms with red ribbons and bows glued on them will turn up inside a teapot or something.)
We gave G and Jen my hand-knitted slippers, and Jen a scarf as well, since she missed my scarf-making binge of a couple of years ago. That's pretty much all we're giving to most adults this year. But we are giving more presents to assorted nieces and nephews, in this case Jen's son. The two books we got him turned out to be appropriate for his age and developmental disability status; he didn't like the handmade hat but his mom did so he'll wear it! His best present, from his new stepdad, was a "Band in a Box" - a set of percussion instruments including a triangle, tambourine, maracas, cymbals, and a couple other wooden thingies. He can carry a tune and rhythm, and even a lot of the words, and so we all got to sing about 30 choruses of Jingle Bells with Joe on the triangle, and another few with Joe on the cymbals. His mom's going to hide the cymbals for outdoor use only!
Dear friends: yes, we like music. Yes, we like CDs and devote a large chunk of our floor space to our collection of music. No, we do NOT want CDs from you as presents. Chances are, if we like it, we already own it. Chances are, if you buy us as a Christmas gift some recording company's "A _______ Sampler," that either we have it, or, more likely, if we like that kind of music, we have every single album that the songs on the sampler came from. If you MUST buy us a CD, consider buying something put out by a local or regional musical group near where you are, that we are unlikely to see distributed up here. Your rule of thumb should be: if you can find it in Barnes and Noble, do not buy it for S & K (gift certificates being the only exception). OK? Yes, it's the thought that counts, and you no doubt were thinking that it reflects the fact that you've noticed our tastes and bought something that fits those tastes. But perhaps, you should have thought, gee, I know that's to their taste because they have several hundred albums of it already!
Oh, and the same applies to books.
That said, we bought ourselves another 5 albums of Christmas music to add to our already-large collection. For some reason, we had not, before now, noticed Trout Fishing In America's Christmas album. And a couple of brass groups we didn't already have, Chris Isaak because I like his voice, and one of the Christmas Revels albums we had also heretofore overlooked.
Happy Boxing Day, everyone!
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-27 12:56 am (UTC)And I understand completely your objection to receiving CD's. It's so hard to buy something for someone who's a really big fan/hobbyist. They've either already got it or you get them the wrong kind. I only buy the spouse books that he's listed on his Amazon wish list, because otherwise, I end up picking the wrong one.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-02 05:58 am (UTC)Religions of course tend to claim what everybody was already doing and plant their flag on that. "You're _really_ celebrating our religion. Mithras beat us to it? Well our guy had a virgin birth too and was born on exactly the same day. Druidic ceremony involve a tree? Sure, why not, that's ours too. Presents? I'm sure they're deeply symbolic of something, give us a minute..."
Rob